Case study
HTML5 Accessibility

Year

2016

Role

Logo design, web design, icons

Company

Microsoft Edge

Credits

David Storey: front-end dev; The Paciello Group: content

HTML5 Accessibility was created by The Paciello Group, a web accessibility consultancy. The site shows whether or not browsers have implemented HTML5 features accessibly, such that users of assitive technology can interact with web content successfully. This of course helps inform web developers of potential issues to look out for, but the test pages also allow browsers to verify that they've implemented features correctly. It was mine and David Storey's (as Microsoft Edge team members) pleasure to support this effort with a redesign.

We started the redesign of the HTML5 Accessibility site in an unconventional place: on the structurally simplest pages. The test pages are what browser vendors use to verify if they’ve implemented a feature accessibly. That means that while they should look nice and be a pleasant experience, it was important to us to restrict the markup only to what was absolutely necessary to render the information and tests—no extra HTML crufting up the screen reader or tabbing experience. We chose to start the design here where the code style was more restrictive to ensure that our design styles worked in this reduced form.

The large numeral 5 is made up of 5 lines.

It is difficult to capture just how many ways people interact with web content. Instead of trying to jam all these accessibility concepts into one small mark, I opted for a more graphical representation of a unified effort.